Dancer Regrets Miley Cyrus VMA Performance

“I love being the center of attention, but that was something different. I was being stared and laughed at for all of the wrong reasons.”

So writes one of the dancers who joined Miley Cyrus on stage for her infamous performance at the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards, in a lengthy blog post explaining that while it may have catapulted Cyrus into the center of the year’s hottest pop culture debate, it also left at least one participant “shaking and crying” and feeling “less than human.” The dancer, named Hollis, added, “I will never forget that performance because it is what forced me to draw my personal line in the sand.”

Given that it was Cyrus who ended up wagging her tongue in a state of near-total undress, one might assume that the dancers would feel like they were getting off easy — after all, they were safely ensconced in full-body costumes. But as Hollis sees it, Cyrus’ twerking was tame compared to the truly offensive part of the night’s routine: exploiting the little people she hired to be part of the show.

“For the first time I felt truly ashamed of being a little person,” she lamented. “We were being used simply because we were little. It felt like society still saw us as a joke, despite the fact there is literally nothing different about me other than the fact I am small.”

And while she was quick to point out that she isn’t “‘hating on’ the people who are currently doing this, or the little people who decide to do performances in a similar vein,” she also issued some strong words of caution for little people in show business, warning that “it is my belief that we will continue to only receive maybe 2% of the auditions and opportunities of our average sized friends. Society will think we’re OK with being laughed at because we still continue to do things that allow them to laugh at us or look at us as props.”